


Clint Barton, The Little Princess

by sendal



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Angsty Schmoop, Christmas Fluff, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Surprises, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-10 09:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12909165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sendal/pseuds/sendal
Summary: In WWII Brooklyn, Omega!Clint is trying to hold things together, really he is, but Alpha!Phil's letters from the front stopped seven weeks ago. Meanwhile the navy has forced Clint out of intelligence school because of dyslexia. So for now he works dawn to dusk in Brock Rumlow's boarding house and sleeps in the cold, bare attic. Luckily he meets Alpha!Steve and Alpha!Bucky, but can they and Russian neighbor Natasha bring Clint a Christmas miracle?Yes, it's the WWII Brooklyn/Little Princess Alpha/Omega Christmas mashup you never expected.





	1. Chapter 1

The smell of roasting chestnuts makes Clint both dizzy from hunger and nauseated by the stink of burning oil and charred skins. Through slush and puddles, past the street vendors and hungry panhandlers, he keeps his head down and makes no eye contact in the after-work Brooklyn crowds. He wishes he had a scarf and something heavier than his cheap green coat, but all he can do is duck his chin and hunch his shoulders. At least he has Phil’s black leather gloves to warm his fingers while everything else goes numb.

Memories of walking these sidewalks with Phil are a comfort, but can't be looked at too closely before inspiring worry and doubt and grief. Clint wants to avoid going back to the boarding house with tears frozen on his cheeks.

He never used to be this mopey and emotional, he tells himself. He used to be optimistic and hopeful and funny.  But the Christmas season has him feeling blue even while everyone else is full of cautious cheer. The news from the war seems better lately, and the stores have hung festive bows. Peace and prosperity are in sight.  

Maybe he’d be himself if he wasn’t tired all the time. Working dawn to dusk at the boarding house under Brock Rumlow's snide supervision would exhaust anyone. He eats whenever he can but is constantly hungry. Perversely enough he’s also plagued with Indigestion that often keeps him awake all night, even if he’s only eaten soup and crackers. Come morning he’s too muddy to even think straight, and the daily grind continues with only a few bright spots to look forward to: Mrs. Riley slipping honey into his tea, the postman maybe bringing a letter from Phil.

He's trying so hard to be a good omega, to wait for Phil without complaint or worry, but there haven't been any letters in seven weeks and three days.

A jostling elbow catches him in his side, and he's knocked into a burly shape hurrying the other way. Clint's worn boots slide out on the icy sidewalk.

"Easy there!" a voice snaps, and a hand grabs before he loses his balance completely. "Watch where you're going."

"Yeah, I was trying to," Clint says, heart lurching. The alpha holding him upright is thick and strong, dark-haired and glowering. Bigger than Brock, and smells just as fierce. Clint forces out, "Thanks. I'm good."

The man sees something in Clint's face. He lets go, though looks ready to act quickly if Clint slips again.

"You're sure?" he asks, no friendlier than a hungry circus bear.

"Never better," Clint says, prickly, but his stupid betraying knees start to give out, and the bear grabs him again.

"Come this way," he says, and Clint finds himself half-carried, half-steered down the sidewalk.

Clint would protest, really he would, but he's too busy trying not to hurl on the guy's black leather jacket. The crowds seem to part around his rescuer like Moses and the Red Sea. Only a few minutes later they pass through a church yard and down stone steps into a bright, warm, loud basement of long wooden tables and folks eating supper.

"I don't need a soup kitchen," Clint protests.

"We're not here for the food," the man says, and steers Clint into a tiny office and a big blue armchair that might have once been salvaged from someone's trash.  

The furniture might be worn, but the office itself is cozy and bright. War posters hang on the walls, along with lists of phone numbers and addresses and volunteers. A transistor radio on a shelf plays Christmas music, an iron radiator hisses out heat, and a white paper angel twirls in the draft of the ground-level window above them.

Wedged at the desk is a blond Alpha Adonis, and it's almost comical the way his knees don't fit and his elbows are in danger of knocking over stacks of paperwork and if he flexed his massive arms he’d touch both walls.

"Bucky, I asked you to go to the bank," says the man, rather patiently.

"I did, Steve. I found this stray kitten on the way back," Bucky says.

Not a kitten," Clint protests, because if there's one thing he hates about being an Omega, it's the way Alphas think they can just talk over you. Unfortunately he's a little too dizzy to speak above a mumble, and if he doesn't hold tight to the chair he might slide out of it.  

Bucky shrugs out of his black coat and drops it onto Clint.  Clint almost protests, because it reeks of an Alpha who is not his, but it’s so warm from Bucky’s body that he shuts his mouth. For the first time he notices Bucky’s left arm is wooden under the long sleeve of his shirt, held in place by a harness. Maybe he lost it in an accident, but Clint would bet he was a combat veteran.  

“Stay there,” Bucky orders. He stalks out of the office, leaving Clint to try and rally under Steve’s curious gaze.

“You don’t . . . “ Steve says, hesitant.

“Part of the five percent.” Clint doesn’t explain more. A small percentage of Omegas give off no or few pheromones. Most civilian Alphas pass right by him, thinking he’s a Beta. Military Alphas usually are trained to notice better.

“Where’s your Alpha?

Before Clint can explain, Bucky returns and thrusts a large mug into Clint’s hands, but not so carelessly that it spills.

“I’m not hungry,” Clint says, but the stew smells delicious and those are real carrots and potatoes bobbing in the thick broth.

“Eat it anyway,” Bucky says.

“Jerk,” Clint mutters, then wants to kick himself. It’s never a good idea to be a mouthy sub around unfamiliar Alphas.

But Steve only laughs, and Bucky appears entirely unfazed, and Clint eats. The stew tastes even more delicious than it smells. It warms him from the inside, and he barely notices when he stops shivering.

Steve and Bucky ignore him in favor of trying to add up some invoices. Clint wants to sink further into the chair and doze off, but Rumlow will be watching the clock. Clint’s curfew is seven p.m. and missing it means sleeping on the stoop all night.

“I have to go,” Clint says, and pulls himself out of the chair’s comfy cushions.  He hands Bucky his coat. “Thanks for the soup.”

“Keep it,” Bucky tells him.

Steve frowns. “Bucky.”

“He needs a coat,” Bucky insists. “I’ve got extra--”

“No.” Clint backs away, wary. Steve and Bucky both looked surprised by his vehemence, but there’s no way he could convince Rumlow that he didn’t steal it. He puts it on a wall hook. “I don’t want it.”

Steve says, “Okay, no coat. Who’s your Alpha?”

“I’ve got to go,” he says, and escapes.

Clint is both relieved and slightly disappointed that they don’t follow him out into the main hall, out the door, up the stairs, and into the freezing cold night.  He suddenly misses Phil so much that his stomach churns, and it takes all of his willpower to keep the soup from coming up again in the church yard.

He makes it home with only a few minutes to spare. Rumlow, sitting in the common room drinking and smoking cigars with some of the guests, tells him the second floor bathroom is plugged up and needs plunging, and the floor scrubbed clean as well. Now.


	2. Chapter 2

Rumlow’s boarding house has fourteen rooms for civilian Omegas attending intelligence or language school at the navy yard. The guests are Clint’s age or a little older, spiffy in their special uniforms, full of charm and swagger and dreams of ending the war. Few of them talk to Clint directly. They’re not malicious, just oblivious. Well, a few are malicious, but Clint knew plenty of assholes at the circus and doesn’t take it personally. None of the guests know that Clint used to be one of them, personally recruited by Commodore Fury himself.

The rooms all need daily sweeping and tidying. The sheets are changed weekly.  Each of the three floors has a shared bathroom, and Rumlow has his own. Clint keeps them all clean. Also carpets need sweeping, trash bins needs emptying, and the two fireplaces need tending. Mrs. Riley has helpers who frequently quit, so sometimes Clint also has to wash the dishes, polish the silverware, or help prepare the meals.

He works every day except Sunday morning, when he attends services at Phil’s church and then goes to the archery class. Clint’s not religiously inclined but Phil liked St. James Cathedral and so they would go together, Phil following along in Latin while Clint admired the high white walls and stained glass windows. They usually sat in the center pews along with other couples and families. Now Clint has to sit in the unaccompanied Omega section. Sometimes, for just a few moments, he can imagine that Phil is sitting beside him with his gaze buried in his hymnal. That afterward they’ll go to a greasy diner and eat flapjacks and drink endless cups of coffee, and the day will pass in lazy indulgences.

Once Mass gets out Clint hurries to the archery club, where he gives lessons in exchange for range time. He likes the kids he teaches, but is frustrated this his own aim has been slipping lately. They tell him that a quarter inch off dead center is no big deal, but he knows better. He knows what Fury would expect of him.

But Fury doesn’t return Clint’s phone calls or letters, and his secretary Jasper Sitwell will never let him past the outer office. Clint knows he’s disappointed the commodore.  Surely if Clint just tried harder, numbers and alphabet letters would stop scrambling themselves and he could be as successful in the classroom as he is with weapons.

The only other times Clint has free is Wednesday afternoons, when he goes to the navy hospital to volunteer in the open wards. Some convalescing sailors are happy for company and the chance to play cards. Others are withdrawn and wounded, and he just sits with them and folds paper cranes the way he learned in the circus. Sometimes he’ll grow attached to a particular patient, because they’re funny or brave or lonely, and then they’ll get discharged and he never sees them again. Sometimes they die, and he carries that sorrow alone. 

Every week or so a hospital ship comes in with new returns. With records and paperwork so backlogged everywhere, it’s easier for him to search the beds than try to get anyone to help him in an official capacity. He passes by men suffering from lost limbs, paralysis, burns, and shell shock. None of them are Phil. The nurses promise to keep an eye out for him, and in return he brings them small chocolates or caramels scrounged out of the very small wages that Rumlow pays him.

Rumlow says Clint should be grateful for any wages at all, considering that he’s given free room and board. The attic space has bare rafters and an unfinished floor, but it’s big enough for a cot and sea trunk and has a small dormer window that leaks in fresh air. It’s freezing cold, of course, but he’s scavenged an extra wool blanket and goes to sleep wearing several layers. He gets to eat in the kitchen with Mrs. Riley, who has five children and still speaks with a County Cork brogue and nips from a whiskey bottle when she thinks Clint or Rumlow aren’t looking. Breakfast is bland oats or occasionally a boiled egg, dinner some small piece of meat, and supper is often boiled vegetables with bread.

The Omega guests eat better, of course, because the military is paying their rent and an inspector comes by monthly to check on the accomodations. Rumlow squeezes money and cuts corners in other ways, and is always threatening to replace Clint and the Mrs. Riley with cheaper, better workers.

“He can try,” says Mrs. Riley when Rumlow isn’t around. “Good luck to him finding anyone who’ll put up with him like we do.”

Clint has thought about finding other work, but if he moves how will Phil find him? Neither of them has family to leave with messages with, and Clint doesn’t trust Rumlow to pass along any communication. 

The idea that Phil’s never coming home, or has changed his mind about marrying Clint, haunts him in the long, cold nights in the attic. He can always go back to the circus, he supposes. They’ll pay him to throw knives, shoot arrows, and swing from the trapeze. What else is there? He can’t afford to stay in the city alone, and he has no other career aspirations, and it’s not like he’ll ever love again. Not after loving Phil.

“You’ve ruined me,” he whispers to the only picture he has of them together. A snapshot at Coney Island at the beginning of summer, Phil laughing as he slings his arm around Clint’s shoulders. Soon after, Phil was unexpectedly shipped out. Then Clint washed out of Omega intelligence school and Nick Fury refused to see him. 

Clint hasn’t told Phil about school. But maybe he found out anyway, and has gone silent out of shame.

The days are getting shorter, the nights longer and colder. Christmas is coming, but Clint doesn’t care. There’s no joy when there’s no Phil.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Wednesday evening, gray and snowing. Clint stays too late at the hospital, trying to console a desperately unhappy sailor with an infected leg. The surgeon wants to cut it off but the sailor is worried about what kind of job he’ll be able to hold down after the war. How he’ll support his Omega back in California and any kids they might have one day. 

Clint doesn’t tell him that he’d be happy to have Phil back in any condition. He also doesn’t say that he’s seen men die of gangrene, and it’s not a good death.  The sailor’s Omega is on a train somewhere, rushing across the country to be at his bedside, but he might be too late. Around them, injured men stare at the ceiling as they struggle with their own injuries and illness and fears of the future.  

Clint feels powerless in the face of all this tragedy, and it’s almost a relief when visiting hours end and the nurses shoo him off. 

On the way back to the boarding house, he runs into a band of Christmas carolers. They’re happy and laughing, full of Christmas cheer and the rum they’re drinking from flasks. When they launch into that old classic, “My Alpha had to go away but he’ll return most any day,” his eyes start to sting. It’s is own fault that he washed out of school and isn’t posted in Europe, where he could somehow find Phil and they could fight the Nazi forces together.  

He turns away from the carolers and sees the glowing basement lights of a familiar church. Clint hesitates. Even though he’s in serious danger of missing curfew and being locked out of Rumlow’s, he has an idea.

“It’s good to see you,” Steve says warmly when Clint finds him. “Hungry? There’s plenty to share.”

“No, I need Bucky’s help,” Clint says. 

Bucky nods at him from his place beside Steve. They’re both ladling soup into mugs for a long, shuffling line of hungry people.  The basement is warm and loud and Clint’s famished, but he keeps his eyes off the food. 

“What’s wrong?” Bucky asks.

“There’s a sailor with a bad leg. They want to cut it off. He says he won’t be able to live that way and I just thought--” Clint stops himself as Bucky’s face goes blank. This was a stupid idea. He shouldn’t have presumed anything.

But Bucky asks, “Where is he?” and soon he and Clint are trudging back to the hospital through the snow and ice. 

The sailor with the infected leg is fascinated by Bucky’s wooden arm, which includes a hinged elbow, leather palm and individually carved fingers. Clint stands watch at the door to let them have a private talk, and if Bucky adamantly injects words like “don’t be stupid” and “your life is worth more than a leg, idiot,” Clint pretends not to hear.

When they leave, the snow has stopped and the blanket of snow carpeting the hospital grounds is softly beautiful. 

“I’ll walk you home,” Bucky says.

“No, it’s okay.”

“I insist.”

“I can’t--” Clint takes a deep breath, choosing between humiliations. “I missed curfew.”

They pass under the gate and turn into the city. Bucky’s tone gets a little clipped. “What does that mean?”

Clint doesn’t need an Alpha’s attitude and posturing. “It means nothing.” 

He tries to walk away, but Bucky grabs his arm and says, “Stop.”

“I’m not yours to boss around,” Clint says tersely, and shakes him off.

The sidewalks are nearly empty. Most sensible people are inside near a fire or heater, or in the bars that line Flushing Avenue. Clint can hear the clang of bells on the river and the wind whistling through canyons of buildings. A bus rumbles to a stop at the corner and opens it door to let out an old man with a cane.

“I’m not here to boss anyone,” Bucky says, sounding frustrated. “I don’t even know your name.”

Clint blinks. “You don’t?”

Bucky arches an eyebrow. 

“Clint.”

“Clint. At least come back and get some supper.”

“I’m not hungry.” But even as he says it, his stomach gives off an embarrassing growl, and Clint sighs. “Maybe just a litte.”

“Then just eat a little,” Bucky says.

Which is how Clint finds himself back in the small office with the angel spinning overhead, the radiator clanking, and the Andrew sisters singing sweetly on the radio. The serving line is long-closed, the tables cleared and chairs stacked, and all the lights out in the main hall, but Steve had a plate ready for him. Clint forces himself to eat slowly in case he gives himself indigestion again. 

“Come by on Sunday and you can meet Father Banner,” Steve says. “He’s a great guy. Lets us help the needy and live in the old rectory.”

Clint swallows some tender green beans. “I go to St. James.”

“Very traditional.” Steve frowns at numbers Bucky is writing and reaches for an eraser. “St. Mary’s is a mix, old and new. Progressive.”

“Phil likes St. James.” The plate beneath Clint’s fork is empty, and his eyelids feel like they’re being dragged down. He leans his head against the armchair for just a moment. “It’s his church.”

“Is he the father?” Bucky asks.

“No, Father Wilson.” Clint tries to swallow a yawn. “I should go.”

If either Steve or Bucky answer, he doesn’t hear it. Sleep takes him under like an incoming tide. When he wakes the office is dark but for a small lamp, the radio has been turned down to barely audible, and Bucky is asleep with his head on the desk. Of Steve there’s no sign. The clock on the wall reads four fifteen, which confuses Clint. It’s too early to be so dark. Then he realizes it’s four fifteen in the morning and Rumlow is going to be furious.

He has to wait outside the boarding house back door until Mrs. Riley shows up with her key.

“Stay out all night, did you?” she asks, her breath frosting. “Himself’s going to be all ruffled up about it, isn’t he?”

Hopping from foot to foot to stay warm, Clint says, “I guess so.”

She pats his shoulder. “I hope you enjoyed yourself. Every young man deserves some fun.”

With the door open, she steps inside and turns on the light. A slight gasp is Clint’s warning. He peers over her shoulder at piles of dirty dishes and glasses. Out in the common room, the ashtrays are overflowing and wine stains the carpet and empty alcohol bottles have been broken in the fireplace. 

“Must have been quite the party,” Mrs. Riley mutters.

Rumlow comes out of his quarters while Clint is on his hands and knees scrubbing the carpet. He looks bleary with hangover, and he hasn’t shaved, and his glare is accusatory.

“You were late,” he says.

“Yes, sir. It won’t happen again.”

“If you’re not going to be reliable, I’ll have to fire you.” 

For a brief minute Clint thinks that wouldn’t be so bad. He could maybe help out at the soup kitchen. Would Steve and Bucky let him? They’ve been kind so far, but he’s learned the hard way that generosity often reveals a hidden price. 

If he leaves, how will Phil find him? 

“Do you have anything else to say?” Rumlow asks. 

Clint keeps scrubbing. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Clint.” Rumlow steps beside him and crouches down. He puts a warm hand on his back. “It’s a rough world out there. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Lieutenant Coulson trusted you to me. That’s a big responsibility.”

“Thank you,” Clint says. His hand on the horsehair brush has stopped, but he doesn’t look up. “I appreciate it. I’m sorry.”  

“Good.” Rumlow’s hand slides down Clint’s back and gives him a swat on the butt. His breath is hot and sour against Clint’s face. “Obey the rules and we won’t have a problem.”


	4. Chapter 4

At the naval hospital, a shortage of staff has Clint pushing patients to different departments and wheeling gurneys through the long, drafty halls. One of the friendly nurses says, “There’s a new John Doe in Ward C, poor man has amnesia,” but when Clint rushes there he sees a burly redhead and not his Phil.  Like a knife, disappointment cuts through him. 

Later a sailor with two broken legs in traction asks him to read from the Old Testament. Clint takes one look at the page of the bedside bible. The letters slide around incomprehensibly under the high ceiling lights. 

“I can’t,” he says, and leaves.

Hunched against the cold, he walks past a movie theater that’s playing Casablanca. Phil would have liked it, but Clint can’t go inside and sit in the dark and watch a story about love and loss.

Minutes later he stands outside the basement of St. Mary’s soup kitchen but doesn’t go in. Snow collects on his shoulders.  From behind the steamed-up windows come the sounds of laughter and camaraderie. He should in, lend a helping hand. But instead he goes home, which is the when the terrible thing happens.

Mrs. Riley tries to catch him first but it’s Rumlow who bears the bad news. 

“The postman brought them special delivery,” he says, his beady little eyes betraying false sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

Wrapped in string are the all the letters Clint has sent to Phil in the last two months. As always, he’d been extra careful addressing each one, worried about mixing up the name or address.  They are stamped red with a word even he can read: “UNDELIVERABLE.”

“Oh,” is all Clint can think to say, standing in the drafty kitchen and looking dumbly at the envelopes. Numbness creeps from his toes to his belly and up his back to his scalp. “I must have the wrong address.”

With a worried expression Mrs. Riley says, “Yes, that’s it, nothing to worry about,” but Rumlow just shrugs.

“Maybe,”  he says.

“Would you like some tea?” Mrs. Riley asks. 

“No. I’m fine.” Clint manages to keep his hand rock steady as he takes the letters and climbs the back staircase to the attic. Once there he sits on the edge of his bed and lights his candle and looks at each envelope. Unopened. Undeliverable. His breath frosts and then hitches, and his vision goes blurry, and he gets a pain in his stomach that forces him to curl up on the mattress.

Sometime later the candle has burned down and the pain receded, and there’s a tapping on his dormer window. He wants to ignore it, but Natasha isn’t easily ignored.

“What’s wrong?” she asks as she climbs through, a sack slung over her shoulders. The gap between their two buildings is narrow and dangerous, but she’s as agile as any acrobat he ever met. 

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Liar.” She sits on the floor, her face smudged and red hair spilling out from under a black fisherman’s cap, and starts unpacking. “Look what I found on Park Avenue.”

Leather wallets, mostly. Men’s and women’s. A wristwatch. A gold bracelet. Being an entire four years older, Clint should reprove her for her wicked, thieving ways. But the money helps supports her sick grandmother, her infant cousin, her disabled uncle, and the desperate collection of Russian Jewish refugees who live in the brownstone next door. She claims to only steal from the rich, which he supposes makes her Robin Hood. She hasn’t reached presented yet, but there’s no doubt she’ll be an Alpha when she blooms. 

The last item she pulls out of the sack is a thick loaf of rye bread and some cheese. She offers him both, but he declines.

“Why are you sad?” Natasha asks.

He shows her the letters.

“Huh.” Natasha chews her bread thoughtfully. “Supports my theory.”

Clint topples over on the cot and puts his face into the pillow.

“No, it does,” she insists. “Your boyfriend is a top secret spy. Top secret spies can’t get letters.”

“You have too much imagination,” he says.

“You don’t have enough.” 

Although the cot is barely big enough for him, she climbs up and squeezes beside him. “You know in your heart that he’s coming back to you.”

Clint squints at her. “When did you become so optimistic?”

“I’m optimistic every day,” she protests. “I am Miss Mary Sunshine.” 

“You hate people.”

“I hate stupid people,” Natasha agrees. “And greedy bastards. What’s wrong with your chin?”

Self-conscious, he claps a hand over the embarrassing acne. The last time he got spots on his face he was twelve years old. “Shut up.”

“I know what would make you feel better,” she says, and stands. “Come on.”

“I can’t. I promised Phil.”

“You promised him you wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. Not that you’d let evil-doers overrun the city.”

Clint squints at her. “Evil-doers?  Really?”

Natasha shrugs. “I’ve been reading superhero comics.”

On one hand, he did promise Phil. On the other, Phil promised to stay safe and come home to him. Clint’s not about to claim the one wrong deserves another, but a few hours of jumping rooftop to rooftop under the dark skies might be good for his mood. Brooklyn might not be exactly teeming with villains but there are certainly some muggers and thieves who’ve been dissuaded in the past by Clint and Natasha. 

“Come on, princess.” Natasha offers her hand. “Your kingdom awaits.”

She leads the way out the window, and he pauses only long enough  to grab his bow and arrows.


	5. Chapter 5

With just two weeks until Christmas the number of people seeking food at St. Mary’s is growing larger and larger. By keeping busy he can avoid worrying about Phil, but in the middle of the night, awake again with indigestion, he often fantasizes about jumping a military transport or stowing away on a ship, reaching England, and following Phil’s trail wherever it takes him. That’s what one of Natasha’s comic superheroes would do, right?

“You could try,” Natasha agrees slowly when he mentions the idea, “but probably not a good idea the way things are now.”

“The war’s going better,” he argues.

She cocks her head to consider him. “Talk to me in the spring.”

At the hospital, the wards are teeming with patients returned from Europe. None of them are Phil. At St. Mary’s, Clint gives in to Natasha’s pestering and brings her with him. She and Bucky hit it off immediately in a brother-sister mischievous way. Clint leaves them to trudge across the snowy courtyard to the old rectory with soup for Steve.

“I’m contagious,” Steve says through his cracked-open door. 

“I spent two hours in the hospital wards today,” Clint argues. “I’m not worried by a cold.”

Reluctantly Steve lets him in and crawls back into his and Bucky’s bed. The studio has high ceilings, a blazing fireplace, and bay windows overlooking the street. One large corner is reserved for paint and canvases. Clint had heard that Steve was an artist, but this is his first confirmation. The cityscapes are vibrant and colorful, and one large canvas depicts the seashore at Coney Island.

“I’m still learning,” Steve says as Clint stares at ocean and sand.

“I think they’re great,” Clint says softly. He tries to ignore the pang of missing Phil and the poignant day they shared out there. To distract himself, he turns to where a Singer machine and cabinet are surrounded by carefully folded fabrics. “Who does the sewing?”

“Bucky learned from his mom.” 

Carefully Clint touches a small blue and gray quilt that’s been pieced together. “This is beautiful.”

Steve is watching him softly. “Well, if you can keep a secret, I think he’s making it for you.”

Clint laughs. “It would have to a lot bigger for me. Here. Bucky said eat your chicken soup.”

“He sent too much,” Steve says once the bowl is uncovered. “You’ll have to save me and eat half.”

While they eat, Steve talks about growing up right here in Brooklyn and Clint talks a little, but not much, about Iowa and his parents dying. He doesn’t tell Steve about his brother or the circus. People always think the circus sounds glamorous, but to him it was endless hours of hard work in summer heatwaves interspersed with long days of travel from one town to the next. It’s no use mentioning his days in the ring, or his archery skills, or how Commodore Fury came to his trailer after a show one day. That Clint doesn’t really exist anymore.

Steve’s eyes begin to close before he finishes his bowl, which Clint attributes to hot soup and not his conversational skills. When he returns to the church basement, Natasha has that look on her face that means she’s keeping a secret and Bucky looks satisfied about something, but he doesn’t try to pry information out of either of them. When he tries to pitch in by scrubbing the dirty pots and pans, they shoo him away to the office with orders to rest.

On the radio, the announcer is telling a story about a little girl named Virginia and her question about whether Santa is real. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” the man says, his voice soothing and warm. “He exists as surely as love and devotion and generosity exist.”

Clint doesn’t remember ever believing in Santa Claus. His older brother had ruined it for him early on. Or maybe it was the empty space under whatever half-dead tree his father had dragged in at the last minute and his mother tried to decorate with ribbon and string. 

The announcer seems to be speaking directly to Clint. “Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

Steve’s desk contains piles of paper. Clint finds a blank sheet and for the first time in forever writes a wish list. “Please bring Steve more paint supplies, and Bucky more needles and thread, and Natasha food for her family,” he writes in large, blocky letters. “Please keep Phil safe. And bring him home to me.”


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

On Sunday morning Rumlow comes into the kitchen and says, “You need to stay in and clean for the inspector who’s coming tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a surprise, but I know people.”

Clint swallows his first reply behind his cup of coffee. The morning is gloomy and sleety and he wasn’t looking forward to the walk to St. James, except that it would get him out of the house. He’s already dressed and groomed. 

“Did you hear me?” Rumlow demands.

“Yes, sir.” Clint is careful not to make direct eye contact. “I’ll be back at one o’clock, as always.”

“Not good enough. I want a top to bottom deep cleaning. They say the inspector is a hardass.”

“I can do it this afternoon.” Clint hates playing the compliant Omega, but forces himself to sound that way. “I’ll work as late as I have to.”

Rumlow’s voice hardens. “Maybe you’re having trouble comprehending me. I need you here all day, cleaning. If you can’t do that, I’ll bring in someone who can. You’ll be out of a job and out of a place to stay.”

Clint rises, his gaze on his cup and saucer as he rinses them carefully. He feels Rumlow glaring at him and knows he’s risking even more by keeping the man waiting for a response, but he’s heartily sick of being controlled and exploited.

“I understand, sir,” he says. 

Rumlow stalks off, muttering under his breath about ungrateful Omegas. Clint goes up to the attic slowly, making sure his footsteps are loud on the back stairs. Once there, he fills his pockets with Phil’s undelivered letters, the picture of them both at Coney Island, and a few trinkets. He can’t take his bow and arrow to church, though, and it would hurt to lose them. 

He stashes them under the a loose floorboard and vows to return later, any way he has to.

Outside the weather is as bleak as he expected it to be. The walk to St. James brings him past other churches, a synagogue, and a bakery with hot rolls cooling in the windows. He tells himself he’s not hungry, but the little bit of sausage and egg that Mrs. Riley left for him didn’t go far. The young Omega shuffling a baby on her hip selling firewood looks more hungry than he does, however, and he buys her the rolls instead.  

“Thank you, sir,” she says, eyes deferred as if he’s an Alpha. He’s been mistaken for one before. With no pheremones to give off, he could be anything at all. 

“Best wishes to you, sister,” he says, and she looks at him squarely with surprise and gratitude.

In the cathedral he sits and stands, sits and kneels, and alternates between terror of being homeless and a new found relief that he won’t have to see Brock Rumlow again. When his stomach growls during the homily it’s loud enough for people to look at him, and he ducks out during the Eucharist. 

It’s a two mile walk in the snow to the archery club, but he arrives early enough that the kids aren’t yet there for their lessons. The landlord, Tony Stark, has left a coffee cake in the office with a scribbled note saying “Eat Me.” Clint has never met him but he knows that Tony’s an eccentric Omega, a mad scientist kind of guy who does some kind of top-secret work for the military, and Clint’s impression is that he bought the range building so he could use the entire second floor as his laboratory.

“You’re early,”  Bruce says, wandering into the office with a stack of papers. His socks are mismatched, his hair ruffled up from sleep, and his glasses need cleaning.  He’s a mild-mannered Alpha math teacher at P.S. 8 middle school. Clint is grateful beyond words that Bruce lets him come practice anytime for free and pays him to teach the kids. 

He thinks Bruce is a little lonely, but he doesn’t have to be. In a reversal of the usual norms, Tony’s been trying to woo Bruce for some time now. So far Bruce has been resisting all of Tony’s attempts, but Clint hopes it won’t be forever. Bruce came from a family similar to Clint’s in all of its dysfunction and deserves some happiness of his own.

“Sorry,” Clint says. “My schedule’s kind of messed up this morning.”

“No need to apologize. Want to help me grade quizzes?”

Clint doesn’t tell him how sadly hilarious it would for him to even try. “Not my thing.”

“Not a thing for my students, either, judging by these answers.” Bruce sees the coffee cake and shakes his head. “I told Tony that sugar and lard aren’t good for anyone.”

“I think sugar and lard are awesome,” Clint says, and that’s especially true for  someone who isn’t sure where his dinner and supper are going to come from. But he’s not going to admit that to Bruce. He doesn’t feel like inspiring pity or sympathy, and it’s his own damn problem to solve.  

In the locker room he changes into athletic clothes and manages a half hour of shooting before the students start trickling in. Boys, mostly, though his best student is little Kate who comes with her nanny. She has a tendency to lock her shoulder, however. He’s helping her adjust her stance when Bucky shows up with a new kid who wants lessons.   

“This is my nephew Ralphie,” Bucky says, looking pleased and surprised to find Clint here. “My sister’s kid. He’s seven, with a vivid imagination.”

“I know what I saw!” Ralphie protests, and squirms away as Bucky ruffles his hair. 

Curious, Clint crouches beside him. “What did you see?”

“A man with a bow and arrow saved a girl from a mean sailor.”

Clint keeps his face straight. “He did? How?”

“I was watching from the window. This man tried to hurt a girl walking in the street, but someone else shot arrows at him and then he and a different girl swung down from a ledge to see if she was okay.”

“No one else saw it,” Bucky puts in. “And no arrows were found in the street.”  

“He took them with him,” Ralphie insists. “I want to shoot like that.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” Clint tells him. 

“Don’t shoot your eye out,” Bucky says. “Your mother will kill me.”

Bucky hangs around to watch Ralphie’s first lesson, which is sweet of him. A lot of parents don’t care to hang around the cold, drafty hall. Caught up in teaching, Clint tunes out all distractions until the church across the street starts ringing the noon bells. With a chorus of “Goodbye, Mr. Clint!” the kids race off for their Sunday dinners, and not until Clint heads to the adult locker room does he remember he has no place to go.

Rumlow is waiting for him. 

“You’re supposed to be working,” he says, stalking to Clint so forcefully that Clint retreats backward against the hard metal lockers. “What do you want me to do? Fail the inspection?”

“No, of course not.” Clint makes the mistake of looking directly at Rumlow’s angry eyes and quickly lowers his gaze. “I’m sorry. I said I’d be back at one--”

Rumlow’s fist slams into the locker beside Clint’s head. “Not good enough, you lazy bitch.”

The only good news is that none of the kids are around to witness this. The bad news is that no adult witnesses are, either. Clint’s going to have to defuse this on his own, without a weapon. He knows some moves but Rumlow’s got a few inches and several pounds on him, and military training from his time in the service. The police take a dim view of Omegas who try to claim self-defense, since many people believe that Alphas are entitled to take whatever they want. 

He know what he should offer, but the thought of betraying Phil that way--of betraying himself, more importantly--twists his stomach.

Rumlow smirks at him. “Another letter came yesterday.”

Clint feels a kick in the gut. “It didn’t.”

“It’s in my study,” Rumlow said. “You were so upset last time that I didn’t want to shock you. But I guess you’ll never see it now.”

Clint feels bile at the back of his throat. “It’s mine.”

Rumlow drops his head, obscenely close to sniffing Clint’s neck. “You made your choice.”

“What choice is that?” a voice asks nearby, smooth and cold and deadly.

Clint blinks at Bucky, who is standing in the doorway looking ready to tear apart some benches.

Rumlow bares his teeth at Bucky. “None of your business.”

“Threaten my friends and it’s my business.” Bucky doesn’t move from the doorway, but his voice drops even lower. “Would you like to take this little dance outside?”

Clint can see Rumlow evaluating Bucky’s size and stance. His wooden arm. His kick-ass boots. In Bucky’s eyes is a dangerous, almost feral look.

“This is my employee,” Rumlow says slowly, as if speaking to an idiot.

“Am I?” Clint asks, unable to help himself.

Rumlow straightens up and drops his arms to his sides.  His eyes don’t leave Bucky. “Yes. You work for me.” 

Bucky asks, “Do you, Clint?”

Clint can easily imagine Rumlow throwing Phil’s letter into a fireplace and letting it burn. If the letter even exists.

“Yes,” Clint says.

From outside the door, the squeak of shoes as the last kids depart. 

Bucky’s chin dips a fraction of an inch. “He’ll be home after dinner at my house.”

Rumlow stares. Bucky doesn’t move. Clint worries that they’ll be locked in place for the rest of the day, so he moves sideways away from Rumlow’s reach and opens his own locker. He keeps his hand from shaking through sheer effort. The squeak of the locker opening is loud against the tile and cement on the walls.

“Be home on time,” Rumlow says. “We have a lot of work to do.”

He leaves. Bucky doesn’t. Clint lets his shoulders drop and he rests his head against the locker, the metal cool on his cheek.

Bucky sits on the bench nearby. “You don’t have to go back,” without judgment.

“It’s my job,” Clint says. 

“I’ll help you find another.”

“Why?” Bitterness creeps into his voice. He’d put up with Alpha posturing in the circus all those years and had thought the big city would be better, but instead it’s just the same old possessive crap. “I’m not your Omega. You don’t even know me. I’m just some sad pathetic charity case--”

“Stop that.” Bucky stands but doesn’t crowd him. Frowns, but with concern and not anger in his gaze. “Not every Alpha is looking for an Omega, and you’re not a charity case.”

Clint scowls. “Then why help me?”

“You help others even when you’re exhausted. You keep giving your all to people who don’t deserve it.” Bucky hesitates. “If I had to go to war and leave my partner behind in a condition likes yours, I’d want someone to help him.”

It’s probably the most Bucky has ever said at once and said so sincerely that Clint doesn’t argue that there are lots of Omegas in similar situations--stuck at home to wait and worry while their loved ones go off to war. He just nods, and lets Bucky help him


	7. Chapter 7

The inspector is a Navy WAVE named Lieutenant Hill. Clint can see Rumlow smirk behind her back, sure that he can charm his way around a woman, but she has a very long checklist that she insists on following point by point with the brisk, no-nonsense attitude that Betas often exhibit.

Exhausted from cleaning well past midnight, Clint trails behind Rumlow and Hill on a tour through the first floor common room and dining room, the guest quarters on the second and third floor, the kitchen, the pantry, the shared bathrooms, and even the linen closets. She checks for dust above the doorways. She inspects under sinks. She studies the heating grates and insists on looking at the oil furnace, which is sorely in need of replacing.

“You maintain a house this size with just two staff?” Hill asks Rumlow when the tour ends in the common room. With only a week left until Christmas, the tree is fully decorated with blue bows and silver bells. Empty boxes wrapped in white paper fill the space beneath it.

Rumlow smiles, but not with any warmth. “We’re very efficient.”

Hill looks at Clint. “I don’t meet Beta housekeepers very often.”

“He’s not,” Rumlow says.

Clint, who has stayed silent throughout the tour, focuses his gaze on the fireplace.

“My mistake,” Hill says thoughtfully. But she doesn’t apologize. “I’d like to see the files and ledgers now.”

They don’t need Clint for that, so he retreats to the kitchen. Mrs. Riley has some tea and toast ready for him. He props his head on one hand and dozes off by the warmth of the stove. She wakes him when Rumlow and Hill emerge from his office, and he’s startled to see two hours have passed.

“I’d like to speak to your housekeeper outside,” she says, and they go out into the brisk, sunny afternoon. Hill is wearing a military wool coat, long and well-insulated. She eyes his green coat with barely concealed disdain.

“The military has a need for Omegas who can pass as Betas,” she tells him.

“I know.” Clint keeps his expression neutral. “I was recruited by Commodore Fury.”

“And now you’re a housekeeper.”

“It didn’t work out.”

She waits. He doesn’t owe her more. Not a single embarrassing detail. But he likes how ruthless she was with Rumlow. So he adds, “Dyslexia.”

Her expression is inscrutable. “Always?”

He hasn’t really stopped to think about it. He’s always had some trouble with letters and numbers, but schooling wasn’t a big priority in the circus and even in foster homes he didn’t have teachers who paid him much attention. When he’d started military training, he’d been able to force himself through the material and his handwriting to Phil had been messy but legible.

But after Phil left--as with everything, it’s a before-and-after line in Clint’s life.  

“Probably always had a problem,” he admits. “But it got worse after Phil--my Alpha--deployed.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. He shouldn’t have told her. Clint shuffles and asks, “Is there anything else, ma’am?”

“Yes. Is there anything you want to tell me about your employer?”

He didn’t think she wanted him to say Rumlow was an asshole, which would be his first response.

“No, ma’am,” he says. “I have work to do.”

Hill passes him a business card. “Call me if you think of anything.”

Rumlow is waiting when he comes back inside, wanting to know what Hill said exactly. Clint replies, “Where’s Phil’s letter?” because Rumlow still hasn’t given it to him, and his patience is thin and frayed, and Omega or not, he might hit the man if he doesn’t cough up what he promised.

Scowling, Rumlow produces a letter postmarked over the summer. Clint takes it upstairs to the attic to read it.

“You have work to do!” Rumlow yells after him.

Clint ignores him. In the attic, he barricades the door and wraps himself in a blanket and reads Phil’s letter, word by word, puzzling through the parts that his brain has trouble with.

Phil tells him about beautiful England, and how busy he’s trying to stay, and how much he misses Clint. He says that they should get married by the seashore, because he knows how much of a novelty the ocean is to Clint. He promises, “I’ll be home soon, my dearest Hawkeye,” and he’s never broken a promise yet.

#

“Hawkeye,” the head nurse says, puzzling through the brief chart that hangs by the patient’s beside. “A dog? A horse?”

The ward nurse, Ann, only recently transferred to Brooklyn from Washington. She feels overwhelmed by the amount of patients, suffering, and paperwork. This ward is especially hectic, filled with men very recently returned on a hospital ship. The handsome patient in bed six is feverish and nonsensical. The doctors think he is suffering from pressure in his brain caused by a head wound.

“He keeps saying ‘dearest Hawkeyes,’” Ann reports. “It must be a person. Maybe his Omega?”

“Strange name.”

“Yes, Nurse Rumlow.”

Amanda Rumlow re-hangs the chart. She has no tolerance for mysteries. “And they still haven’t found his paperwork?”

Ann only knows what she’s been told. “There was a small fire on the ship. They’re trying to reconstruct records for several men.”

“If he doesn’t improve, Dr. Thorson will want to do brain surgery,” Amanda Rumlow says. “It’s too bad we don’t know who this Hawkeye person is or how to find him. They might never see each other again.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

The weathermen predict a major blizzard for Christmas Eve that will immobilize the city. Within hours, the stores are crammed full of people using their ration books and hard-earned cash to stock up on food, lamp oil, firewood, blankets, and other necessary supplies to ride out the storm’s aftermath. 

Steve’s worried enough to call the boarding house telephone. “You should stay with us,” he tells Clint.

St. Mary’s is going to be crowded enough with cots and blankets for homeless folks who need to be out of the storm’s icy reach, so Clint demurs. Natasha climbs across to his room and tells him to come sleep in her house, but her extended family is always loud and quarreling. At the archery club, with lessons cancelled for the day, Bruce knows the futility of asking Clint to stay and instead and gives him a large fruit cake.

“Tony made it himself,” Bruce says. “Enough sugar and rum to last you all year.”

“He really likes you,” Clint says.

Bruce adjusts his eyeglasses. “Maybe.”

“It’s so obvious, how can you miss it?”

His cheeks pinkening, Bruce says, “Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s right in front of us.” 

On Christmas Eve morning, with the blizzard imminent, the boarding house furnace dies a groaning, rattling, smoke-choked death. Rumlow is furious that he can’t get a repairman out immediately. Luckily there are only a few boarders to worry about, as most of the Omegas have gone home for the holidays.  Unluckily, Clint’s the one who has to go buy firewood and haul it back to the boarding house. 

Wood is so hard to find that he has to drag a wagon all the way to Prospect Park and back again. Then he rushes to the hospital to check on a rumor of some newly returned and unidentified patients, but when he gets there the gates are closed for the weather emergency.

“Run on home before you freeze,” says the stern gate guard.

Gloved hands wrapped around the iron bars, Clint considers banging his head against them. Then he considers vaulting the gate and dashing inside. Instead he turns around and trudges home. The gray skies start spitting snow on his way through streets already empty of traffic. By mid-afternoon it’s as almost as dark as night, the winds rattling and shaking panes under torrents of snow and hail. In the common room, the three Omega boarders play chess and cards while he keeps the fire well-stocked. 

“You should rest, Clint,” says Peter Parker, the newest Omega recruit. “You look funny.” 

“Just tired,” he says, which is true. He hasn’t been able to eat much today, and his stomach his bothering him more than usual. But he doesn’t want to worry Peter, so he adds, “I hope we all get a lot of rest tonight.”

Rumlow watches the conversation from his armchair, eyes visible over the fold of his newspaper. A short time later he corners Clint on the stairs.

“You shouldn’t sleep up there,” he says, and puts his hand on Clint’s forearm. “It’s too cold, and I’ll be worried. Stay with me in my room.”

Clint has no illusions about what Rumlow means by that. His stomach twists.

“No thanks,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

Rumlow’s gaze narrows. “Is it that feral friend of yours? You’ve jumped into his bed already, princess?”

Clint brushes off the hand and goes upstairs without punching Rumlow in the jaw.

The attic is frigid and the boards rattle in the wind. It’s only barely better than sleeping outside. He pulls on every piece of clothing he owns and crawls into bed, sleeping on his right side to ease a weird pressure that’s been building all day. Sleep takes him down to surreal Christmas dreams where the archery club is filled with happy music and pretty ballet dancers and a magically replenishing buffet of every food imaginable. Clint gets to set on a gold throne and hand out Christmas presents to kids while Bruce dances with Tony, Bucky twirls around with Steve, and Natasha slips through the crowd stealing wallets. 

The very best part of the dream is when Phil kneels before Clint, then captures Clint’s hand and draws him up to a kiss.

“I knew you’d come back,” Clint says, warm and melting and so very grateful he could weep. 

“Always,” Phil says.

When Clint wakes, daylight is bright beyond the frosted window and the storm is long ended. He is severely disappointed to say farewell to dream Phil. But maybe he is still dreaming, because on his bed is a satin coverlet warmer than any blanket he’s ever had. A table he’s never seen before is covered with covered plates of food, and a coal brazier glows with cheerful heat. 

He’s actually too warm now, so he pulls himself upright and finds slippers on the floor, which is covered with a square blue carpet. 

“Huh,” he says. “Merry Christmas to me.”

The food includes fruit, muffins, warm kippers, and tea. He needs to go to the hospital, but he’s ridiculously hungry. Halfway through his third muffin, there’s a thudding on the stairs and the door opens without even a knock.

“The power’s out and you need to get more firewood,” Rumlow says, then stops to gape. “What the hell?”

Clint stands up. “It was like this when I woke up.”

“It magically appeared?” Rumlow sneers.

“I don’t know.”

“You stole it.”

“I didn’t!” Clint protests.

“You stole all of this,” Rumlow says again, with grim satisfaction. “You stay right here while I call the police.”

“I can’t stay. I have to go to the hospital--.”

The bastard doesn’t even let Clint try to finish. He slams the door behind him and locks it. Clint shoves two more muffins into his pockets, goes out the window, and makes his way down the icy fire escape into a city blanketed in white.

“Clint!” he hears Natasha call out far behind him. “Wait!”

He doesn’t wait. It’s so cold the air feels like razors, but navigating the knee-high drifts on the streets soon has him warm and sweating and breathless. Around him, Brooklyn is beginning to dig out under white and gray, ice and snowfall. Smoke pours out of chimneys, children take to corners to sell buckets of charcoal, and river boats between the navy yard and Manhattan honk their displeasure at ice floats.  He doesn’t know how serious Rumlow is about bringing in the police but Clint has no intention of being jailed. He’ll check the hospital and then hop a train if he has to, or stowaway on a freighter, or hide in the back of a truck. 

But the hospital is ringed by emergency vehicles and they won’t let him in.

“Part of the roof collapsed under the snow,” a Beta fireman tells him. “No injuries, thank goodness. But a lot of mess.”

Patients are being wheeled out to ambulances for transfer to other facilities. In the frenzy of activity Clint manages to slip inside, shed his boat, and steal an orderly’s jacket. No one notices him as he goes from bed to bed, hoping for the one face he’s dreamed of for so long. In one long green hallway he hears a nurse say, “The commodore should be here soon,” and a moment later, a hand grabs him.

Clint swings a punch, but Bucky easily catches it.

“Easy there!” Bucky says. “It’s just us.”

Natasha is with him, both of them dressed incongruously in medical coats like his own. Their presence is so surprising he just gapes.

“I didn’t get to come yesterday,” Clint tells them. “I need to see if he’s here.”

Natasha is furious. “You’re an idiot.”

At the end of the hallway, Rumlow arrives with a police officer and the head nurse beside him.

“In here,” Bucky says, and ushers them all into a side waiting room. The shades are open to the bright day and snowy hedges, and a patient in wheelchair is faced away from them. Natasha closes the door to a slit to monitor Rumlow in the hallway while Clint stares at them. 

“How did you get here?” he asks, perplexed.

“She called me.” Bucky shakes his head ruefully. “So much for our surprise visit from Santa Claus.”

Clint gapes. “You did it? You put all that stuff in my room?”

Bucky shrugs. “With help.”

“With my help,” Natasha says smartly.

“Hawkeye,” mumbles a voice behind them. “Where is my Hawkeye?”

Clint’s heart nearly stops. Only one man outside of the circus has ever called him that. He goes to the chair on unsteady legs and gazes down at Phil, who is covered with blankets and dressed to be transported elsewhere. He’s live, whole, with a dressing wrapped around his head. Alive. Whole. Breathing, alive, his face haggard but so achingly familiar that all Clint can do is kiss him.

“Phil,” he says, and his eyes are wet. “You came back.”

“My dearest Hawkeye,” Phil repeats. 

Clint’s throat is dangerously tight. “I’m here,” he says, with more kisses and a genuine flood of tears. His heart is so happy it might break. “You came back, just like you said.”

Phil doesn’t look at him. His voice is distant. “Don’t cry.  Good soldiers don’t cry.”

Bucky puts his hand on Clint’s shoulders. “Clint. Look at him.”

It finally occurs to Clint that something is very wrong with Phil. His gaze is empty. No recognition. Whatever hurt his head has affected his memory or thinking. Which is ridiculous and tragic and not acceptable at all, but Clint has no idea how to fix it.

Natasha has come to stand with Bucky. Their solid presence can’t make right what is so obviously wrong. The world wants to tilt out from under Clint, but he leans against Phil’s wheelchair and frames his beloved’s Phil’s face with his cold, cold hands. 

“I’m Hawkeye. Right here. Phil, look at me!”

Phil blinks. 

“I’m Hawkeye,” Clint insists. 

“Hawkeye,” Phil breathes. The emptiness in his expression gives way to elation. “Oh, Clint.”

Any chance of keeping composed flies out the window as Clint’s world collapses into a happy  mess. Phil’s lips are warm and welcoming, and although there’s nowhere near enough room for two grown men to share that wheelchair, that doesn’t stop Clint from trying to climb in next to him. Bucky and Natasha are laughing at him, or maybe with him, and when the door opens and Rumlow says, “There he is, officer,” Clint trusts them to have his back.

“I’ve missed you for so long,” Clint tells Phil. “You have no idea.”

Phil’s smile is like the sun after a long, long night. “I have some.”

‘Never leave me again?”

“Never,” Phil promises. But then his smile fades as his nostrils flare, and Clint knows he’s smelling something that worries him.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks.

“Never better,” Clint swears, but that’s not entirely accurate. The pain in his stomach that was plaguing him last night has returned with a certain urgency, and to his utter mortification it seems like in all the excitement he’s wet his pants. Suddenly sitting on the floor is the best idea he’s ever had.

Phil tries to get out of the wheelchair. “Clint!”

Bucky and Natasha, who have been dealing with Rumlow and the police officer, turn around in alarm.   

Clint realizes, with startling horror, that a very large object is pressing against his Omega slit, and it’s warm and moving and something he should have figured out long ago. But then a pain unlike any he’s ever known sweeps through him, stealing his thinking but not his ability to scream. His seam is ripping, flesh tearing apart with a red hot agony. The room erupts with people and commands and Phil frantically telling him to calm down, which doesn’t really help.

“You’re going to be fine,” Bucky promises him. 

“You better be,” Natasha threatens. “Great sense of timing, Barton.”

The door bangs open as a gurney is shoved in. They lift him, which makes the pain even worse. Clint looks for Phil’s face and finds it. Phil looks almost comically surprised but also elated and maybe even terrified, which are too many expressions for Clint to deal with in any coherent way. Phil has struggled out of the chair but is only able to stand with Bucky’s hands under his shoulders. 

“Hold my hand,” Phil says, and as a new wave of pain arrives Clint grips it so hard that Phil grimaces. Still, he says, “Keep squeezing, sweetheart. Squeeze as much as you want.” 

“But don’t push!” a nurse yells. “Where’s that doctor?”

Into the confusion of people and Clint’s screams, a familiar figure strides into the room in a knee-length navy coat and leather patch on one eye. He observes Clint with his legs splayed wide, Rumlow red-faced and arguing, Phil with the dressing around his head, and Natasha and Bucky trying to help. 

Commodore Fury demands, “What the hell is going on in here?”

The world goes dark before Clint can answer.


	9. Chapter 9

He almost dies.

Much later, when Phil can make himself say phrases like “premature labor” and “extensive hemorrhaging” without having to stop and regain his composure, Clint will climb on top of him on their sofa and kiss away the bad memories. Because “almost dies” means he didn’t. The doctors saved him. The Christmas miracle happened.

Clint never tells him about the dream he has during the time he passes out and later wakes up in intensive care. It’s that dream again of beautiful dancers and sumptuous foods and all of Clint’s friends in a ballroom filled with light. But instead of being at the party this time he’s outside on a snowy balcony that overlooks the glowing metropolis. He’s locked outside, standing on the icy rail, the streets and shops and buildings going dark beneath him. 

Street by street they fade into black and silence, and he understands he's fading, too. 

Above the skyline, the great dome of night is filled with stars calling Clint’s name in voices his heart remembers. His mother when she was a young housewife doing the best she could. His father before the badness took him. Friends he’s lost. A chorus of voices, welcoming him to a luminescence that floods him with wellbeing and warmth. Up in the sky he’ll be happy, with none of the tumult and pain in the world below.

Behind him the party has gone still, and the wind rushes pasts his ears, and he understands a choice must be made.

Just then a light streaks across the sky, interrupting the call of the beyond. Clint can’t be sure but he thinks he hears sleigh bells tinkling.  A man laughs. 

“Not your time, lad!” says a jolly voice.

Clint doesn’t want to go into the sky. He wants Phil and whatever life awaits them together. Stepping off the balcony is easy, and when the French doors swing open beneath his hands he’s able to step back into the party and gaiety. 

All the faces that welcome him back are familiar, except one.

#

“So apparently the five percent of us who don’t give off mating pheromones also don’t give off other pheromones,” a voice is saying when Clint wakes up. 

It’s not the first time he’s woken up, so he remembers the private hospital room. But he doesn’t recognize the dark-haired man with a goatee sitting at his bedside.

“Tony Stark,” the man says, his eyes bright and staring. “Did you like my fruit cake?”

Bruce walks into the room with two cups in his hands. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll feel better with some of that coffee,” Clint says honestly. 

Bruce obligingly passes him the cup he was about to pass to Tony. Clint wriggles upright in the bed to take it. He’s incredibly sore and tired but the coffee helps. Tony, pouting over his lost caffeine, says, “It was my grandmother’s recipe.”

“It was great,” Clint promises, though he doesn’t really remember eating it. Much of the last week is a blur punctuated by very vivid despair, incredible pain, and even more incredible joy. “Where’s Phil?”

He knows that he asks that every time he wakes up and Phil’s not in the room. Maybe he’ll be able to stop in a dozen years or so.

“On his way up,” Bruce assures him.

Bucky, Steve, and Natasha arrive before Phil does. They’ve brought hot doughnuts that go very well with the coffee. Natasha lets Clint have first pick, which is her way of showing concern. He chooses chocolate, which meets with her approval.

Tony says to Bucky, “You knew, didn’t you?” 

Bucky says, “Who are you?” 

“Tony Stark, genius inventor.”

“My Omega,” Bruce adds, sounding almost resigned about it. 

Tony’s grin is blinding. “Yes, I am.”

“Why are you so worried about who knew?” Bruce asks Tony.

Tony steals a doughnut right out of Bruce’s hand. “I’m a man of science.”

“Did everyone know?” Clint asks curiously. 

Bucky shrugs modestly. Steve says, “He figured it out first,” and Natasha adds, “I had strong suspicions.”

Clint gives them all a frown. “How?”

“Bucky worked with an all-Omega unit early in the war,” Steve says proudly. 

Bucky ignores that and looks over the doughnuts.

Bruce said, “We thought you were trying to keep it a secret.”

Or they’d thought he was an idiot. Because, really, who wouldn’t notice? The doctors have told him that his psychological denial of what was happening to him was no doubt due to stress, grief, and exhaustion, but Clint can’t help but feeling more than a little dumb.  

The door opens to admit a nurse with the rolling crib and Phil, who might be a decorated military officer but is obviously not skilled enough to be trusted with such precious cargo. The nurse, Ann, passes Clint a squirmy, red-faced, unhappy bundle. Clint delights in the sight of the scrunched-up nose and eyes and soothes the baby until the little cries taper off.

“Good morning,” Phil says with a kiss for Clint.

Clint approves of Phil’s uniform, which look far better on him than hospital pajamas did. “Good morning. Discharged?”

“And on medical leave until further notice,” Phil confirms. “I have three appointments to look at apartments today.”

“The old rectory has an apartment on the first floor that’s open,” Steve says. “Two bedrooms, large kitchen, pretty affordable. I wanted to take it, but someone’s too lazy to move.”

Bucky kicks him. Steve doesn’t seem to mind. Clint hides his smile against his son’s fair, perfect head. The smell of a baby is something he doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of. The kid’s very small because he’s premature and Clint’s nutrition hadn’t been so great, but he’s got ten fingers and ten toes and Phil’s eyes, so incredibly blue. Clint hasn’t had much time to freak out yet about parenthood but all the pain was worth getting to this point, those blue eyes, the tiny hand grabbing Clint’s finger tightly.  

Phil looks around the room. “I want to thank you for being there for Clint when I couldn’t. Obviously I can’t share classified information, but I never intended to lose contact. I’ll be having some words with Mr. Rumlow, who I consider criminally negligent.”

“You won’t find him.” Bucky says off-handedly. “He left town.”

“On his own?” Clint asks.

Bucky’s smile is small and cold. “He was encouraged.”

Phil nods in appreciation. “I’ll also be talking to Commodore Fury, who failed Clint in important ways.”

“I heard that,” says the commodore, who is struggling through the door with a large wrapped gift in both hands. He sets it down on the floor and straightens his coat. “Barton, did I ever tell you that you are a pain in my ass?”

Clint is bewildered. “I am?”

“Sir,” Phil says, a warning.

“I’ve had to fire my secretary Sitwell because he didn’t pass your messages to me when I returned from extended trip overseas,” Fury complains. “He also managed to lose the note from the school that you’d been disenrolled for academics. One of the best assistants I’ve ever had, except that he appears to have been easily influenced by his own prejudices that Omegas aren’t fit for the military and evenly more co-opted by outside forces.”

The baby starts to fuss again. Clint rocks him and confesses, “I don’t understand.”

“He and your landlord,” Fury says. “They had a previous relationship. Luckily Lieutenant Hill did some digging after she met you at the boarding house. Did you know that pregnancy hormones can temporarily increase dyslexia?”

“Oh,” Clint says. And then, “So I didn’t all of a sudden just get dumber?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Natasha offers.

Phil says, worriedly, “You don’t want to go back to intelligence school, do you?”

Clint hesitates. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants, other than for Phil to never go away again and the baby to be healthy and safe in this time of war. It seems like he hasn’t had much choice in his own life for so very long, and the freedom to make decisions is an even better elixir than hot coffee.

“We’ll discuss it later,” Fury says, “along with your next desk assignment, Cheese.”

It’s Phil’s turn to look embarrassed. Clint’s never known why Fury uses that nickname, though he looks forward to finding out.

Despite enjoying the camaraderie, Clint’s still so tired that he starts to nod off. He feels Phil’s steady hands try to take the baby, but he tightens his grip and wakes himself up to say, “The name!  We didn’t tell them.”

Phil smiles. “We can tell them later. You need to rest.”

“The birth certificate needs to be filled in,” Clint says. He looks at his friends. “James Steven Bruce Barton Coulson. Is that okay?”

Steve and Bruce look pleased. Bucky looks pink. Natasha pouts and says, “My name means born on Christmas Day. Don’t I get a mention?”

“When we have a daughter,” Clint promises. But then he darts a look at Phil, just to make sure another kid is someday in their plans, and Phil looks so proud that Clint’s throat tightens up.  

“I made you a fruit cake,” Tony says. “Don’t I get a mention too?”

Phil tilts his head. “Do I know you?”

Clint laughs. It’s an incredible Christmas miracle that everything that was so screwed up in his life has now reversed to this moment, this happiness. He’s not looking forward to sleepless nights tending a baby, and isn’t even sure he’ll make a good parent, and there’s no way of telling how well he’ll be able to juggle the dreams for his own life along with those of Phil and the baby,  but he’s willing to give it his very best try. 

“Go to sleep,” Phil urges, taking James into his own arms. “I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

Clint snuggles into his pillow to obey. 

“Yes, Virginia,” he murmurs, more to himself than any of the friends and family he holds dear. “There is a Santa Claus after all.”

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all who have commented so far! Knowing people like it is very inspiring. Constructive criticism always welcome. It's been great writing it, but even more fun sharing it.


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